A Terribly Durable Myth

The exhibition “Jews, Money, Myth” at the Jewish Museum in London seeks both to document and to refute the stereotype of the moneyed Jew. The subject is distressingly timely. Propelled by rising nationalism on the right and antiglobalism on the left, in the past two years anti-Semitism has come back into the headlines. Politicians and activists on all sides now implicitly endorse or even repeat accusations of Jewish greed and financial power. The Labour Party in the United Kingdom has instituted a complaints procedure to deal with allegations of anti-Semitism in its leadership and ranks, which has resulted in the expulsion of a dozen members. In 2017, hate crimes against Jews in the US rose by 37 percent from the previous year (accounting for almost two thirds of all religious-based hate crimes), and across Europe in 2018 almost one in three Jewish people experienced anti-Semitic harassment.

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